Courses

Keystage 3

History is the study of our past. We learn throughout KS3 where we come from, why people in the past behaved as they did, and how the past shapes our future. We have tailored our syllabus to develop a sense of understanding and enquiry, providing skills that are transferable to all future occupations.

Year 7 concentrates on comparisons of past societies. We focus on the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Middle Ages to draw similarities and differences between cultures, learning how to use sources and data to gain a deeper insight into how the past is represented and how cultures grew from one to another.

For Yr 8 students, the opportunity to engage in depth studies of slavery, and to study British History during the Tudor period forms the basis of our learning, promoting self study and research to draw our own conclusions about the past

By Yr 9, our students hone their skills to study topics such as World War 2, the Holocaust, and Jack the Ripper, using project based learning to identify areas of interest to each learner, where they have the freedom to research specific parts of each topic that appeal to them.

Keystage 4

Unit 1 – International Relations 1900-1939

June 28th 1914, the Black Hand Gang had just succeeded in killing the hated Austrian Archduke, Franz Ferdinand. Six weeks later Europe embarks upon a war that will leave over 16 million dead, transform the map of Europe and by 1918, rank as the deadliest war the Western World has ever seen. The death of the Archduke was but one step upon this road to war, but Europe had been expecting war for over a decade. Since Germany was united under Bismarck it had been seeking its ‘place in the sun’, just as its European neighbours had achieved. Britain saw the expanding Germany as a potential rival to its global dominance; France and Russia saw the rise of a historic enemy. The fragile peace between the European Great Powers was torn apart piece by piece over fourteen years of aggression and misunderstanding, dragging with them countries from across the globe. Following the Treaty of Versailles an uneasy peace rested across Europe; though the fires of war had been extinguished the hatreds and fears that sparked war in 1914 had not.

Unit 2 –Germany 1918-1939

Germany is defeated and democracy is forced upon her by the victorious allies. Over the next twenty years the German people slowly turn their back on the freedoms and rights awarded to them under the Weimar Republic and instead support the National Socialist Party and its leader Adolf Hitler. From a minor annoyance of a few hundred members the National Socialists become the dominant force in Germany, changing forever the shape of Europe once more.

Unit 3 – Transformation of Britain 1931-1951

Hopelessly in debt, no support for the sick and injured war veterans and the very real threat of a revolution to overthrow the Government! Britain following the Second World War was very different to today’s Britain, how it got there is explained over the twenty years up to 1951. The creation of the National Health Service, mass unemployment, surviving the Blitz, another war with Germany. All these events helped shape the Britain we now live in, and defined what it means to be British.

Unit 4 – Vietnam Coursework

America’s longest war. Fought over 8000 miles away in the jungles of central Vietnam many hundreds of young Americans experienced their first and only time outside of their country here, killed suddenly by an unseen enemy they neither understood nor truly wished to fight. America lost not only the war but also its place in the world and its sense of what it means to be American. To understand America today is to understand the Vietnam War and its causes and consequences.